page_title: Altenburg
section_title: Topography
hierarchical_section_title: Altenburg / Geography and demographics / Topography
caption_attribution_description: English: Districts of the thuringian city Altenburg in 2009. Deutsch: Diese Karte zeigt alle Stadtteile und Ortsteile der thüringischen Kreisstadt Altenburg im Jahr 2009.
context_page_description: Altenburg is a city in Thuringia, Germany, located 40 kilometres south of Leipzig, 90 kilometres west of Dresden and 100 kilometres east of Erfurt. It is the capital of the Altenburger Land district and part of a polycentric old-industrial textile and metal production region between Gera, Zwickau and Chemnitz with more than 1 million inhabitants, while the city itself has a population of 33,000. Today, the city and its rural county is part of the Central German Metropolitan Region.
  Altenburg was first mentioned in 976 and later became one of the first German cities within former Slavic area, east of the Saale river. The emperor Frederick Barbarossa visited Altenburg several times between 1165 and 1188, hence the town is named a Barbarossa town today. Since the 17th century, Altenburg was the residence of different Ernestine duchies, of whom the Saxe-Altenburg persisted until the end of monarchy in Germany in 1918. Industrialization reached Altenburg and the region quite early in the first half of the 19th century and flourished until the Great Depression around 1930.
context_section_description: Altenburg is located on the southern edge of the Leipzig Bay, a flat and fertile area, with intensive agricultural use and lignite surface mining 10 km (6 mi) north of the town. The nearest mountains are the Ore Mountains approximately 50 km (31 mi) to the south-east. The Pleiße valley runs east of the city, whereas the center itself is located at Blaue Flut (blue flood) river, a small tributary of Pleiße river. The Blaue Flut feeds the Großer Teich (big pond), an inner-city pond with an island in the middle, on which the Altenburg zoo is located. There is relatively little forest within the town's municipal territory: the small Stadtwald (town wood) and Herzog-Ernst-Wald (Duke Ernest wood) south of the center and the Fasanerieholz (Pheasantry wood) at Ehrenberg district. The elevation of the city center is 200 m, to the north it declines down to 162 m and in the south next to Mockzig district it rises up to 261 m.
caption: District map
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